


Angels of Ruin

by grommile



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion, Rebuild of Evangelion | Evangelion: New Theatrical Edition
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2018-11-03
Packaged: 2019-07-20 06:00:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16131128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grommile/pseuds/grommile
Summary: Shinji Ikari, awakening under yet another unfamiliar ceiling, cannot help but become involved in the defence of the world.(Dead pending rewrite - the concept my brain was insisting on for Mari was turning out to be pure crack.)





	1. 01.01 - A familiar unfamiliarity

# Angels of Ruin

### 01.01: A familiar unfamiliarity

The human mind seeks constants to anchor its understanding of the world. For the young man named Shinji Ikari, awakening under an unfamiliar ceiling had lately come to be such a constant. By not knowing where he was, he knew where he stood.

The details of his situation, however, stripped away any comfort he might have derived from that familiarity. The ceiling was made of acoustic tile, there was a drip attached to his right hand, he hurt in several different places, and his first attempt at sitting up in bed left him lying down again with dark spots dancing at the edges of his vision.

"You're awake," observed a female voice, from the foot of the bed. "You're lucky."

"I don't _feel_ lucky," muttered Shinji as he sat up more slowly this time. There was a blue-haired woman about his own age sitting in the chair by the opposite wall, dressed in some kind of cosplay bodysuit and apparently wearing red contact lenses.

"Understandable." She rose from the chair and tapped a button on her wristband. "Central, young Mr Ikari has woken up."

Shinji found himself re-evaluating the woman's bodysuit. The fabric certainly hugged her figure appealingly, but it also made the _gun_ holstered at her right hip very obvious. Perhaps it wasn't cosplay after all. "Uh, what's going on?"

He caught the faintest flicker of a frown on her otherwise dispassionate face as she answered. "An Angel manifested in your accommodation block. The casualties were lower than they could have been."

A chill ran down Shinji's spine. He'd heard plenty about the Angels - who hadn't? - but the news reports and the rumours contradicted each other so often that he had no idea what to believe. "What did it do?"

"It killed some people and damaged the building. It tried to kill me. It died." Again, a faint flicker of expression, this time a hint of a smile. "It was very weak."

"How many?" He didn't want to know, but he couldn't stop the words coming out.

She opened her mouth to answer, glanced sideways towards the door, and tapped her wristband again.

"Central, something's wrong." Her eyes widened ever so slightly, and she drew her gun. "Understood. I'll use the rear exit." Another pause. "Civilian."

"What was that about?" asked Shinji.

"People are being killed. The security systems are not working."

"Who's killing them?"

"Fanatics." She trained her gun on the doorway one-handed. "Pull that IV out. Gently. There are clothes in my backpack. Get dressed. Especially the shoes."

Shinji grabbed the IV line, gritted his teeth, and pulled. It came out easier than he was expecting, though it still hurt. "Where are we going?" he asked, swinging his legs off the bed.

"HQ. You can save your other questions until then. Get dressed."

Shinji nervously shifted his weight onto his legs, and was relieved to find they'd still take his weight. Crossing the room, he opened the backpack and started getting dressed. "I didn't get your name," he said as he finished pulling on the blue jeans she'd provided. They felt brand-new.

"Ayanami," she replied, moving the fingers of her free hand like she was counting. "There are sixteen intruders. Fifteen of them have equipment they shouldn't. I have planned an exit route."

Shinji finished getting dressed. The T-shirt was snugger than he liked, and the velcroed sneakers felt just as brand-new as the jeans even though he was sure he hadn't seen ones like them in five years. "I'm ready, Ms Ayanami."

"Good. Bring the backpack. Follow me." She pulled the door open and led him out into the corridor. As he followed her, Shinji tried not to think too much about the noises he could now hear. _He_ was safe. Something about Ayanami gave him the absolute certainty that anyone who tried to kill either of them would not survive the attempt.

Ayanami stopped in front of a locked door and holstered her gun. "Mr Ikari. My next action is classified. Discussing it with the public is a serious offence."

"Uh, OK," said Shinji.

Ayanami's eyes - her _naturally red_ eyes, Shinji now realized - began to glow, and he felt a strange sensation of _pressure_ as she drew back her hand and punched the lock. Metal and wood proved no match for her fist, and she seized the edge of the hole she'd just punched and pulled the door open with ease. "This way."

Shinji followed her into the dimly-lit service stairwell, adding yet more questions to the ones he already had. Staying close behind Ayanami, he almost bumped into her when she stopped abruptly on the last half-landing before the bottom. "Sor-" he started to apologize, only to find her finger suddenly pressed firmly against his lips.

"Be quiet, Mr Ikari," she said softly, before lowering her finger and drawing her gun again. "Stay against the wall."

Shinji obeyed, waiting nervously as she continued down the stairs. Just as he pondered looking around the corner to see what she was doing, he heard two sharp cracks, almost painfully loud, followed by a heavy thud. "Mr Ikari," Ayanami called moments later. "Come here."

Anxious for what he might see, Shinji descended the last leg of the stairs and found Ayanami rifling through a dead man's pockets. "Ms Ayanami?"

"Carry this," she said, pulling a long, flat black box from the dead man's tactical vest. "Don't do anything else with it. Follow me." She led him along a cramped service corridor full of pipework, round the edge of a boiler room, and out through an emergency door.

Shinji blinked a few times, dazzled by the sudden transition from dim interior lighting to the white glare of a thinly overcast sky, then looked around. "Are we meeting someone, Ms Ayanami?"

The merest flicker of a frown crossed her face. "We should be," she said, tapping her wristband. "Central, where's our ride?" She paused. "Captain Katsuragi? Is that- I see." She returned her attention to Shinji. "Captain Katsuragi will be here shortly. Very shortly. Do you get carsick?"

"Uh, not really? I mean, I don't get sick on buses or trains."

"Captain Katsuragi displays excellent command of her vehicle." Ayanami paused, and took a deep breath. Shinji saw a tension in her expression that wasn't there before. "Even when she doesn't need to."

"Are you all right?" he asked.

"Overexertion. I'm still above baseline." She paused. "Captain Katsuragi will be landing in the rear car park. Section Five will engage the fanatics."

Shinji blinked. "Landing?"

"Flying is faster than driving." Shinji heard distant shouting and automatic gunfire. "Section Five are at work. Keep your head down. Follow me."

Shinji followed her, ducking behind the cover of parked cars whenever he could, until she stopped next to a white van. Beyond the van, there were a dozen or so empty spaces. "Is she really going to land there?"

Before Ayanami could answer, a shadow swept over them and came to a halt. Shinji looked upward and saw the boxy white-and-orange bulk of a UN combat VTOL sinking to the ground, its tail pointed towards them. The boarding ramp was already halfway open as the vehicle came to rest, and a woman's amplified voice called out from inside. "Get in quick, you two!"


	2. 01.02 - I saw a man

### 01.02: I saw a man

Rei Ayanami silently pondered the young man she'd saved.

His name and his face made her think of a woman she'd seen once.

His survival was something of a transgression on her part.

Brigadier Rokubungi would want to have words with her.

She found that prospect less troubling than she expected.

The failure of her telemetry implants was a convenient coincidence.

* * *

Safely strapped into a heavily padded seat, Shinji tried to look everywhere but at the woman who'd saved his life. The dimly lit interior of the VTOL offered very little else to see, though, and he soon found his eyes drifting back to meet her gaze.

"You are troubled, Mr Ikari," said Ayanami.

Shinji flinched in his seat. "I... not really."

"Interesting." For a moment, Shinji thought she'd raised an eyebrow.

"I'm not used to..." Shinji swallowed hard and forced himself to loosen his grip on the armrests. "Is it far to where we're going?"

"Just over an hour. We are staying subsonic."

"Oh. Where is it exactly?"

"Just east of Mount Fuji."

Shinji thought about that, and remembered the patchwork of red and yellow covering much of eastern Honshu on the map. He cast a nervous sideways glance at the boarding ramp. "Isn't that in one of-"

His query was interrupted by the cabin loudspeaker. "Hold on to your lunch, folks. This bird has a tuning fault, but we're going supersonic anyway."

The faint bass hum that pervaded the cabin took on a dissonant note, and Shinji felt his seat begin to judder around him.

"Rest assured HQ is safer than Kagoshima," said Ayanami, as if predicting what his question was going to be.

Closing his eyes and swallowing hard to slow his rising nausea, Shinji smiled weakly and nodded. Opening his mouth right now seemed like a bad idea.

* * *

ANGELIC SIGNATURE DETECTED  
MAGNITUDE CLASS: 4-K  
ENTITY DESIGNATION: SACHIEL

* * *

Face half-hidden behind his steepled hands, Gendō Rokubungi feigned professional detachment as he watched the scene unfolding on the command centre's wall of displays. An observant onlooker, with nothing better to do than watch the commander of the United Nations' anti-Angel brigade in Japan, might have noticed the slight tensions in the muscles of his cheeks, hinting at the upward turn of the corners of his mouth as he anticipated his vindication.

The wall was dominated by an operational map, showing the manoeuvres of Japan's Special Self Defence Force as they engaged the Angel that had just risen out of the waters of Tokyo Bay. Icons moved towards the red dot tracking the Angel's position, then fled away from it or vanished entirely, and the corners of Gendō's mouth crept just a little higher each time. General Satō had been terribly proud of the ease with which his force's new weapons dispatched the trio of Class 3 Angels that attacked Kobe a month ago, and spoke loudly to anyone who would listen about how this would allow Japan to reclaim responsibility for its own defence from the UN.

Gendō turned his attention to the top right section of the display, showing a countdown in minutes and seconds, and his covert smile faded. Even now that she had cast aside the recommendations of the Kagoshima ground crew, her arrival would be far too close to the line. He tapped one of the intercom buttons on his desk. "Doctor Akagi. Is the Provisional Unit ready for launch?"

"As far as it can be," replied the weary-sounding voice of Ritsuko Akagi. "And my ears are ready to launch that woman with or without an Evangelion."

Gendō grimaced. He'd been spared the dubious pleasure of Pilot Makinami's singing, but he'd read the personnel reports. "Don't worry. Your ears won't have to suffer much longer."

A flashing red message on the display wall drew Gendō's attention. "N2 DEVICE INITIATION IN THIRTY SECONDS."

"Plug her in, Akagi." Gendō switched off the intercom and watched the seconds tick away on the N2 device's countdown.

As the numbers reached zero, a red-and-black striped box appeared mid-screen, bearing the legend "SENSOR OVERLOAD - SIGNAL LOST". A shocked murmur ran around the command centre, reminding Gendō that far too many of his staff were recent recruits, and a call indicator lit up on his desk. He picked up the handset for the JSSDF special hotline. "Rokubungi here."

"That... _thing_ just survived an N2 warhead," declared the voice of General Satō, in a nigh-accusatory tone. On screen, the alert vanished and the unit icons reappeared.

"I was given to understand that your force now had the means to defeat Angels. That is why we have not deployed an Evangelion to the site, as such a display of lack of confidence might have caused embarrassment for the government."

"You... you... Very well, _Brigadier_. As the appointed representative of the Japanese government, I request the intervention of the United Nations."

Gendō smiled. "Of course, General. We have an Evangelion on standby. I will order its launch. Is there anything else?"

General Satō hung up without another word. Gendō returned the handset to its cradle and tapped the intercom button. "Launch when ready, Doctor."


	3. 01.03 - I knew his face

### 01.03 - I knew his face

Alone in the Entry Plug of Provisional Evangelion Unit 05, Mari Makinami flexed and twisted both of her arms experimentally to make sure that the synchronisation assistance cables had enough play in them. Satisfied that the ground crew here were as good at their jobs as their counterparts back home, she tightened the straps of her five-point harness and took hold of the control grips. "Ready when you are, Doc," she announced.

"All connections secure. Beginning synchronization," replied a voice Mari recognized as belonging to the cute lieutenant whose name she hadn't quite caught.

Mari closed her eyes for a moment and smiled as she felt the comfortingly alien presence of her Evangelion's consciousness entering her mind. She could feel the weight of her armour and the subtle pressure of the Evangelion cage's security restraints around all four of her arms. This was going to be a good day, she knew. There was an Angel to fight, an Angel that could not be beaten by any other weapon. She opened her eyes, and instead of the walls of the Entry Plug she saw the inside of the Evangelion cage.

"Synchronization stable at seventy-seven percent." There was a note of admiration in the lieutenant's voice as she reported the result. "Disengaging restraints. Launch systems are under your control, Pilot."

" _Well I've been to Hastings_ ," sang Mari as she thumbed the launch button.

* * *

The light of an Angel's soul blazes brightly to those who can perceive it.

Rei could sense the Angel far off to the east.

It was not like the ones she had fought before.

They were driven by nothing but an urge to destroy.

This one had a goal.

Rei suspected she knew what it was.

She could also feel the dimmer, more discordant light of another potent soul.

It seemed that Brigadier Rokubungi had deployed the strange half-crippled Evangelion that had been sent as substitute for hers.

She could not quite name how she felt about this.

* * *

Shinji's nausea began to subside, but his discomfort remained. He felt hot like he'd just walked five kilometres in the sun with a heavy load, and he kept getting flashes of pins and needles in his abdomen. He plucked at the front of his T-shirt, flapping it in an attempt to cool himself down a little, but it didn't really help. Wiping the sweat from his brow, he opened his eyes and looked over at Ayanami.

She had her head tilted to one side contemplatively, and her face was as undemonstrative as ever. "You'll be all right soon, Mr Ikari," she said.

"What's..." Shinji blinked, trying to focus on Ayanami as she - and everything else - shifted in and out of focus. He was hungry. Almost as hungry as the time he'd got stuck in an undersupplied refugee centre for three days thanks to a landslide. "What's going on?"

"The side effects of not dying." There was definitely a note of concern in her normally placid voice.

"Wha'?" It was hard to talk, and everything was a blur now. "Wha' tha' mean?"

"Central, get someone to the aeroplex with some hyposprays." Her voice sounded more and more distant as she spoke. "At least three. My standard-"

Darkness and silence engulfed him.

* * *

Shinji's awareness returned slowly and fitfully, senses coming and going as they pleased.

Hands unlatching his harness.

The taste of blood in his mouth and the smell of metal close to his nose.

Being lifted off the floor.

A sharp sting in his right upper arm, and a surge of pressure that became a dull ache.

The sound of voices, and of steady, regular rattling.

Down was behind him and up was in front of him. He was lying on his back, and guessed he was being wheeled somewhere.

There were six people around him, and he didn't understand how he knew that when he couldn't see them properly or tell their voices apart. One of them was very different to the others. More intense, more powerful. Ayanami?

Laughter. A sharp retort. He could distinguish light and dark again. Mostly what had to be ceiling lights.

They came to a halt, and there was a brief exchange. Four of the people went away, leaving probably-Ayanami and one other. Words started to make sense.

"What's going on, Ayanami?" asked not-Ayanami, with the same voice he'd heard over the VTOL's intercom. "Those hyposprays are toxic to normal humans."

"Mr. Ikari is not exactly normal, Captain." There was a mechanical hissing, and the two of them wheeled the gurney another three metres or so. "He needs to be examined. Doctor Akagi will be able to help him further."

"'m righ' here," mumbled Shinji, his mouth finally working at last. There was a lurch and he realized he was in an elevator going down.

A blurry face that had to be Ayanami's leaned over him from his left, and she pressed her hand to his forehead. "Captain, you have a level two clearance for Project E, correct?"

"Sure. But he doesn't."

"Humans are entitled to know something about what has happened to them. Mr Ikari, you were the subject of a surgical experiment." Ayanami gently tapped his abdomen. "Material from the same source as my maternal gamete was implanted in you."

"Implanted?!" He could see her face clearly now. "What do you mean implanted?"

"I think she means they cut you open and stuffed bits of alien inside you." Shinji looked over to his right and saw a woman with purple hair, dressed in a red jumpsuit with some kind of badges on the collar and sleeve. "I'm Captain Katsuragi. Sorry for the rough ride."

His strength rapidly returning, Shinji sat up in the gurney. "So... someone put something inside me, and that did something to me."

"Yes. The implants weren't given the necessary nutrients to fully develop. They protected you from the Angel's id flare. They didn't protect you from the ceiling." Ayanami brushed her fingers across his forehead. "I had a hypospray left after the fight. I injected you with it. Your implants activated. You recovered from your injuries."

"What happened on the VTOL? Why did I pass out?"

"Your implants responded to your motion sickness. The supply of suitable nutrients was inadequate." She smiled faintly. "On the up side, you are now completely immune to motion sickness."

The elevator came to halt and a red light lit up on the control panel. Katsuragi muttered darkly under her breath and tapped some numbers on the keypad. The light flicked to green and the doors opposite the ones they'd come in by hissed open, revealing a weary-looking woman with bleached hair wearing a labcoat over a wetsuit. She looked the trio over and shook her head. "I was hoping to get a _nap_ while Makinami killed the Angel," she said.

"And Ikari here was hoping to not pass out in a VTOL that was shaking the hell out of his guts," riposted Katsuragi, "but sometimes we have to take what we're given."

"Ikari?" The labcoated woman's eyes widened. "Welcome to NERV, Mr Ikari. I'm Ritsuko Akagi, and for my mother's sins I'm responsible for the welfare of Project E subjects."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has been revised because the original version was making the task of writing the next chapter kick my ass.


End file.
